Booby-trapped arms caches 'are still hidden in South Africa': Soviet agents placed weapons across Africa during the Cold War
By Erenei
PUBLISHED: 03:05 GMT, 7 July 2014 | UPDATED: 08:06 GMT, 7 July 2014
Booby-trapped caches of weapons are probably still hidden around South Africa after being concealed during the Cold War by Soviet agents preparing for conflict, a leading historian has said.
Details of how clandestine stockpiles of small arms and communications gear were hidden across Africa are disclosed in a KGB intelligence archive made public for the first time on Monday.
Documents from the Mitrokhin archive also reveal how a woman considered by some to be the Soviets' most important spy was given a medal and lifetime £20-a-month pension “for many years of excellent work” revealing nuclear secrets from her London office.
The trove of files copied down by a senior KGB archivist called Vasili Mitrokhin over a 12 year period before he defected in 1992 is considered one of the most invaluable intelligence sources of the Cold War and provides a detailed insight into Soviet spy operations.
Nineteen of 33 box files containing his notes are being opened to the public at Churchill College in Cambridge.
Mitrokhin’s notes provide detailed descriptions of weapons caches hidden around major African cities for use by agents operating abroad should tensions escalate into a conflict.
Professor Christopher Andrew, a historian and friend of Mitrokhin who has written two books on the archive, said caches were hidden around most major cities. Though the archive provides no details of hidden weapons in South Africa except for one, they are almost certainly here, he said.
He added: "This was a large scale operation and the caches were strategically placed in most countries during the Cold War. "Given that South Africa played an important role during the war, it would be remarkable if this tactic wasn't deployed here. Of course by now they would not be easy to find and it is unlikely the weapons would be serviceable."
Describing one stash near Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Mitrokhin provides coordinates to a field. He adds: "Enter the bush from the nearby lamp pole, there is a little faint trail to the left. After arriving at the coordinates be on the look out for a suspicious pile of rocks which marks the spot. It should be behind and under a bush in the middle of the field. Look for a suspicious pile of rocks. Beware of allied forces with preying eyes."
Mitrokhin’s notes led to the unmasking of Melita Norwood, who as an agent code-named Hola was considered to be the Soviet Union’s most important ever female agent, Prof Andrew said.
While working as a clerk and secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in London she was able to pass on secrets which are believed to have been critical to the Russians’ atom bomb programme. She was only unmasked in 1999, then aged 87 and living in Bexleyheath, and nicknamed ‘The Spy who came in from the Co-op’.
Her official KGB file in the archive details how she was “recruited in 1937 on ideological basis based on a tip from the leadership of the British Communist Party". The KGB praised her as “a loyal, trustworthy, disciplined agent, who sought to deliver us maximum benefit”.
The file says: “Hola passed on a lot of valuable materials for nuclear energy, which she accessed by removing them from her boss’s safe, photographing them and then placing them back.” In 1968 she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour for her service to intelligence. In 1962 she was appointed a lifetime pension of 20 pounds a month, which was paid up to June 1973.
“It is unlikely she realised the significance of much of what she was passing on – to a non-expert and stripped of its context, it would have seemed relatively mundane. “But there is no doubt from these documents that the information she passed on were extremely useful to the KGB."
Norwood was never prosecuted as such a move was deemed "inappropriate" by the Attorney General.
